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Social Media Account Name Alignment | Nathan Ives | Digital Products Platform

Social Media Account Name Alignment

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Social Media Account Name Alignment | Nathan Ives | Digital Products PlatformLike all other elements of your brand, aligning your social media account names will help establish recognition, trust, and engagement with your audience.  A consistent naming convention also serves to reinforce the connection between you and your audience across all of your digital platforms.  So while this exercise might be a little tricky, it’s a worthwhile investment of your marketing time.

Establish a Naming Convention

Your social media account names should reflect that of your business and be easily recognizable by those you seek to engage.  Here are a set of principles to follow when developing your social media account naming convention:

  • Chose a name that aligns with your company and brand
  • Your social media name should be as specific as possible
  • Avoid using acronyms and abbreviations that will be familiar to only your inner circle
  • Stay away from names that could be confused with another company, product, service, or individual
  • Consider your chosen name from the perspectives of others to ensure its appropriateness for all audiences
  • Your social media name should convey an official status
  • Not all social media outlets allow the same number of characters for a username and so you will need to accommodate that which is most restrictive
  • Not all social media outlets allow special characters in their usernames

Selecting Social Media Account Names

Because of the vast number of users on the popular social media sites, we recommend the following process to selecting your social media account names consistent with your established naming convention:

  1. Develop a prioritized list of desired names
  2. Check all of the social media outlets applicable to your business for the availability of these names
  3. If a name is not available on one or a very few social media sites but is available on the majority, consider slight modifications to the name such as insertion of obvious abbreviations, adding a company title (e.g. LLC, Inc., etcetera), or appending the year (i.e. 2017)
  4. Having identified an acceptable name to be used across social media accounts, quickly register these accounts using that name with the intention of later configuring the social media pages
Stylistic Uniformity | Nathan Ives | Digital Products Platform | Digital Business

Stylistic Uniformity

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Stylistic Uniformity | Nathan Ives | Digital Products Platform | Digital BusinessWith the myriad of communications bombarding your customers, it’s increasingly important to get your message across as quickly and concisely as possible.  In fact, the average person’s attention span is only 6 – 8 seconds!

Effective branding visually conveys your message in a manner that subconsciously communicates key elements of your message without words.  Think of the best known brands and their stylistic communications…

  • Apple’s clean, white, contemporary backgrounds, images and styling;
  • Nike’s bold athleticism and swoosh;
  • Coke’s cool, wet red, and silver; and
  • IBM’s big blue.

In each case, the branding communicates volumes without printing or saying a word.  And everything the respective company publishes embodies uniformity in styling so to ensure viewers immediately recognize their communication and register the desired message.

Application

Achieving this level of immediate brand recognition requires discipline and uniformity in the styling of all of your communications from your website and social media accounts to your presentations, videos, and podcasts to your stationary, letterhead, and business cards.

Key Elements

Immediate brand recognition occurs through consistent, repetition of messaging.  Receivers of your messages should always ‘see’ the same styling such that, over time, they come to associate the uniqueness of your styling with your business and its characteristics.  Key styling elements include:

Color

The specific color combinations used across all of your communications, platforms, and products should be the same.  But how can you define an array of colors that both reflect your company and look good together?  One simple method is to use the predefined color scheme used within your website’s theme.  As is typically the case, these color combinations have been defined by professionals with an eye for what works together.  Simply choose the scheme that aligns with your desired messaging and then apply those colors across all of your many internal and external communications mechanisms.

Fonts

Like colors, character fonts visually communicate the uniqueness of your brand.  Be careful to choose a font that is web and printer friendly; taking the lead from your website theme often works well.

Images

Images illicit feelings among viewers and photographers each tend to exhibit a unique approach to the stylizing of their images.  Images may be contemporary, rustic, real-life, illustrated, etcetera.  Choose and image style that conveys the desired feeling about your business and consistently use those types of images.

Depth

Visual depth represents another styling variation.  Flat (lacking depth) is a cooler, contemporary styling whereas shadowed (deep) imaging is a warmer, conservative styling.  Whichever approach you choose, apply it consistently across all of your communications mechanisms.

Other Features

There are many other opportunities to reinforce your messaging through consistent styling including:

  • Logo (styling application and consistent use)
  • Taglines
  • Trademarking
  • Bullets (both type and color)
  • Icons (consistent application/use and color)
  • Indenting
  • Framing (images and text)